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Speaker 2: On today's episode, we talk about when believing in yourself
goes horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: It turns out the haters are often right.
Speaker 2: And perhaps a just trust me bro trip to the
Arctic is often a bad.
Speaker 1: Idea, especially if you do it in a balloon.
Speaker 2: Sit back and relax and listen about the Swedish hero
that Never was.
Speaker 1: Welcome to soft Core History.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to softcore History. I'm your host for the week,
Damna Jester, joined as always by Rob Fox.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're dressed like our souls look today.
Speaker 2: This is by far the most delco I've ever looked.
I got the Eagles jersey over the hoodie, not just
any Eagles jersey to a Cooper Dejingers.
Speaker 1: Which is like secretly people in Delco are like sweet.
I could buy a White.
Speaker 2: Guys jersey, White corner. That's a unicorn.
Speaker 1: That is a yeah, that's it. Not even just a unicorn.
That's like a unicorn Pegasus.
Speaker 2: Had a baby. It's a mythical creature.
Speaker 1: Winged unicorn. A unicorn and a pegasus banged unicorn with
wings comes out.
Speaker 2: I mean, think of like the last major white cornerback.
He even sounds fake. Who Jason Seahorn?
Speaker 1: Was He a corner throws his safety?
Speaker 2: He Seahorns a corner Okay, okay, yeah, doesn't come around often.
It's like a Haley's comet.
Speaker 1: Once every eighty years, once in a lifetime.
Speaker 2: So I'm appreciating it got the dub today, not that
it matters for the podcast, but I'm happy. I'm in
a good mood.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, like you're dressed like you are,
and I'm dressed like I am. You got sweats and
an Eagle's jersey over a hoodie, wearing a Vineyard Vines
fleece pull over and a backwards uh, not felt, but
look a backwards hat with a leather strap on it
and khakis.
Speaker 2: Depending on the situation, we both looked like we would
spit on one another. Yes, like if we're at a
game or in an arena, that kind of situation, that environment. Yeah, yeah,
I'm picking a fight with you. Yeah, but if I'm
in the wrong neighborhood, you're probably calling the police on me, yeah,
and happily.
Speaker 1: Watching as they shoot you dad. And on my block.
Speaker 2: Yeah, You're like, please get this this trash, this filth off,
my strain, my wife.
Speaker 1: He was dealing fentanyl. I know it. I know he
was dealing fentanyl in this neighbor in our neighborhood. You know,
what's the purpose? Why do we even have a gate
at the front If he can get in, what's the
purpose of the gate? Honey?
Speaker 2: There is certainly a life where I'm dealing drugs and
don't County like, you know, everything hits the fan. I
have to go back to Ridley Township. I'm slinging. Probably
not pills because I have had too many friends die
from like opioids and heroin, but maybe cocaine.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you start out weed and then
you grow up and you're like, I just want a
little more money, and you do coke, but you don't
want to do meth or pills because it's a little
even though you are a drug dealer, you're like this
kind of trash.
Speaker 2: I have a code, Yeah, I have ethics. Yeah, but yeah,
it's getting cold now around the country. It's getting chilly.
That's why wearing our winter clothes doesn't get cold here.
Often we're supposed to supposed to snow on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: To hear, Oh my god, I'm gonna be so pissed.
I have tickets to the Texas Missouri game and.
Speaker 2: Be fuck it's getting snowed out that yeah, for.
Speaker 1: Like an inch.
Speaker 2: Because we don't have the infrastructure here.
Speaker 1: It's fucking bullgit.
Speaker 2: They're not gonna assault the roads. There's not gonna be
any plows.
Speaker 1: Hate this.
Speaker 2: There's gonna be so many accidents.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be really funny.
Speaker 2: And that kind of brings us into today's topic. Okay,
pretty well, we're talking about the cold.
Speaker 1: The history of cold, specifically the Arctic. Okay, the Arctic, yes,
the the you know what it's called the Arctic and
the Antarctic.
Speaker 2: Why rob do you know why rob Okay, yeah, I
mean I know for sure, but like in case the
audience doesn't, please explain to them, because I totally know.
Speaker 1: One has bears and one doesn't. Arctic ant Arctic.
Speaker 2: Obviously the Arctic has bears. Yeah, Arctic means bear.
Speaker 1: I guess I forget what exactly what it means. Uh,
but yeah, yeah, yeah, basically Antarctic is because there's no bears.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's kind of cool. I didn't know that. Yeah,
I'm walking away with fun fact today. Oh yeah, Arctic
is Greek for bear. There you go. Yeah, I should
know that. I just played Assassin's create Odyssey. They didn't
really bring up the word Arctic though.
Speaker 1: You didn't find a bear.
Speaker 2: I fought a couple of bears. Oh well, and they
didn't bring it up.
Speaker 1: They should have been like arcticas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Do you like the bad like, well, they don't have
bad vieo, but it's still just like you're attacking, You're like, oh, arcticas.
Speaker 2: No, that's when they actually tried with the vo that game.
And yeah, origins actually have really good voice acting. Okay, yeah,
but no, today we're going to talk about nineteenth century
kind of exploration into the Arctic, specifically a man by
the name of Solomon August Andre.
Speaker 1: What kind of name is that?
Speaker 2: Also known as Essay Andre Essay Andre.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's still weird, but I do like the Essayesa.
Speaker 2: Hey, yes a.
Speaker 1: But it's just just like it's classy when you just
the initials, Yeah, initial your first two.
Speaker 2: If you wrote a book, would you go by your initials?
Speaker 1: R E.
Speaker 2: Fox.
Speaker 1: It sounds weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like W R. Bowling.
Speaker 1: That sounds better.
Speaker 2: It's classier.
Speaker 1: It sounds way classier. But Fox doesn't work. R E. Fox.
It sounds sounds like a store.
Speaker 2: Kind of like a knockoff of Marshalls.
Speaker 1: That's gonna say, like a radio shack type of place.
Come on down to get your favorite electronics at R E.
Speaker 2: Fox. Radio Shack had a bit of a run that
who could have saw their demise?
Speaker 1: It was huge in the eighties. It was like the
fucking spot dude, eighties and nineties. You can get all
kinds of You get a beeper, cool random shit there. Yeah,
but the problem is.
Speaker 2: I want to go old school. Might get a beeper again,
Not that I ever had a beeper. My dad had
a beeper my dad had a beeper too. Yeah, I
thought that was like just go blue collar. What was
my dad like important? We should do it for the
studio though. Don't contact me via phone via message. Hit
my beeper, do.
Speaker 1: Like a doctor do. Doctors aren't even beepers anymore. They
have like the brick cell phones. Now they've upgraded. Yeah,
they've got like the two thousand and five Nokias.
Speaker 2: Okay, I could do kind of like the the slide
up LG with the keyboard bring back keyboards were nice. Yeah, nice.
Speaker 1: I liked the feel of the keys. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now I say. Andre was an engineer at the patent
office in Stockholm and a balloon enthusiast, Like you like
to fly him hot air balloons. I didn't know if
he was just like, no, he's not flying like he's
blowing up children's balloons like kites.
Speaker 1: You're not doing an up situations.
Speaker 2: He's not strapping himself to a chair with a thousand balloons. No,
he's a hot air balloon enthusiast.
Speaker 1: It feels like an expensive hobby, but good for him
it is.
Speaker 2: He proposed a plan for letting the wind propel a
hydrogen balloon across the Arctic Sea to the Barren Straight
with a landing spot somewhere in either Alaska, Russia, or Canada,
while passing near or even right over the North Pole
in this way.
Speaker 1: Because no one had done it yet, many wouldn't been
to the North Pole.
Speaker 2: Yet people had. I think he wanted an aerial view
to take photos. Oh okay, can I document it? Nobody
had done it via air? Okay, so you gotta be
the first of something. Hey, I guess I think the
typical route was boat, boat and sled.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's an ice cap event. But
there's no land in the North Pole.
Speaker 2: It's all ice.
Speaker 1: It's all ice and water.
Speaker 2: Andre's interest in balloon started at the Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia in eighteen seventy six. There it is finally the
Philadelphia's eyes see a.
Speaker 1: Big Philadelphia heroes, a Andre inspired. What I assume is
gonna be his own death.
Speaker 2: No, he's from Sweden, so we don't really claim him.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: He went to Philadelphia for a cup of coffee, all right?
All right? So he he works as a janitor during
this Worldfair. What he's he's like college educated. He is
like a very intelligent man, but he goes over for
the fair to meet the specific man by the name
of John Wise, who's one of the pioneers in balloon
int and he hangs out with him, but in order
to make ends meet and kind of like fill his
time during the day. He's a janitor at the Worldfair.
Speaker 1: Sure, I guess you need a work visa, right, Yeah,
can't just be like what do you what do you
entering the United States for? He's gonna hang out a
little bit, talk balloons. Get out, Yeah you get get
get right back on that fucking boat.
Speaker 2: So he ultimately wants to go on a trip with
John Wise, but that never ends up happening. Wise passes
before he ever gets a chance. But in eighteen ninety three,
Andre purchases his own balloon finally after saving for years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a high schooler buying a car. He
buys his own not air balloon after're saving up working
odd job, working a janitor job.
Speaker 2: And with this balloon that he called the Zif, he
made nine journeys with it, starting from either Stockholm or Guthenberg,
and he traveled a combined distance of over fifteen hundred kilometers. Okay,
whatever that is a mileson the conversion.
Speaker 1: It's not that far.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not that far. And I want to
spoil this for you, Rob, The story does not have
a happy end.
Speaker 1: I figured it didn't. What could go wrong flying a
hot air balloon over the north Pole?
Speaker 2: Surely this will work.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now. During a couple of his flights, Andre tested and
tried out the drag rope steering technique, which he himself created, which.
Speaker 1: Is what you just drop a rope to the ground
and try to make yourself go a certain direction.
Speaker 2: He would drag ropes off the balloon basket and drag
part of their length on the ground. They were designed
to counteract the tendency of the craft to travel at
the same speed as the wind, a situation that would
make steering by sails impossible. The frictions of the rope
was intended to slow the balloon to the point where
the sails would have a better effect.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're still using sails, but you needed the
rope for the sails.
Speaker 2: To slow it down, and he thought he would have
control of the balloon.
Speaker 1: You've never ever told me about a deador man.
Speaker 2: The technique is rejected and clowned by modern balloonists.
Speaker 1: I'm fucking sure. First off, how long are these ropes?
How high is he?
Speaker 2: These are like very very long ropes, Okay, very heavy
ropes too.
Speaker 1: And is he crewing this balloon alone?
Speaker 2: Maybe the balloon that he originally bought, but ultimately the
journey to the Arctikia is joined by two others. Now,
in the late nineteenth century, Norway was a world power
in Arctic exploration. The Swedes very far behind. Okay, so
they needed a hero.
Speaker 1: They needed somebody to get out there.
Speaker 2: They needed guess was the perfect situation, right, a country
starved for their own kind of like dubs, you know,
they want to get their own wins.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about a country that had a
cup of coffee of being a big boy and then.
Speaker 2: Fell off a cliff, it's Sweden.
Speaker 1: Sweden. Sweden made some noise in the early eighteenth century,
maybe late seventeenth century. There was a chance. You know,
Sweden was good at war. They were doing some shit,
just never never got it off the ground.
Speaker 2: He was good at fundraising money and if I'm easy
to gain support for his ideas, because again Sweden was
kind of gung ho on anything, desperate for a hero,
they just needed something like who's our guy?
Speaker 1: Who do we have?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: When is the lasted?
Speaker 2: And Andre stepped up. At a lecture in eighteen ninety
five for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Andre thrilled
the audience with his idea of polar exploration, and he
explained that he would need four conditions. You ready for
these four?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I'm ready for his list of miracles.
Speaker 2: Must have heavy enough lift in power to carry three
people and their scientific equipment, advanced cameras for aerial photography
provisions for four months, and carry about three thousand kilograms.
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, buddy, Now it's not all I'm picturing. What
he should have had is I'm sure they've represented this
in other places, but like that guy's stupid hot air
balloon ship from the Mummy to the Scorpion King. Mm hm,
you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Black Back Flies, it's my favorite movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm picturing he should have had.
Speaker 2: And I'm guessing it must retain the gas well enough
to stay afloat for thirty days.
Speaker 1: Also, what year is this again? Eighteen seventies?
Speaker 2: This is eighteen nineties? Is it not a zeppelin yet
I'm sure there is, but he's doing it via hot
air balloon.
Speaker 1: This is just asinine.
Speaker 2: Then the hydrogen gas must be manufactured and the balloon
filled at the Arctic launch site. So they would have
to set up an actual site where they would fill
the balloon and be able to take off from. And
it must be at least somewhat steerable. Andre gave a
glowingly optimistic account of the ease with which these requirements
could be met. Larger balloons had been constructed in France,
he claimed, and more air tight too.
Speaker 1: Nobody's fact checking that.
Speaker 2: Some French balloons had remained hydrogen filled for over a
year without loss of buoyancy.
Speaker 1: Nineteen hundred, it said on the dot was when Zeppelins started.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we didn't have Zeppelins.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As for the hydrogen fill in the balloon at the launch,
I could easily be done with the help of a
mobile hydrogen manufacturing unit. For the steering, he referred to
his own drag rope technique, stayed in that a deviation
of twenty seven degrees from the wind direction could routinely
be achieved. Andre assured the audience that Arctic's summer weather
was uniquely suitable for ballooning. So he's gonna go during
the summer.
Speaker 1: How does he even know?
Speaker 2: He's kind of making things up there he goes.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he's I was gonna like I was
trying to think of an analogy, but what this really
just sounds like is to me, like I'm gonna take
a balloon to the moon.
Speaker 2: A little bit.
Speaker 1: Right, Like I'll be in an enclosed capsule with my
own oxygen, but I'm gonna take a balloon all the
way up to the moon, or at least into outer space.
I'm gonna balloon myself all the way up to outer
space like one of those Red Bull guys. And then
I'll have some rockets attached to my asshole and I'll
shoot to the moon from there, and then ever and
then that guy dies and everyone's like, Wow, didn't see
that fucking coming.
Speaker 2: Do you believe scientists? I don't At this point, I.
Speaker 1: Guess I passively believe scientists every second of every day,
based on any number of actions I take with them.
Speaker 2: You think the moon's real, bro, that's a projection. We're
in a giant dome.
Speaker 1: Okay, We're just a science experiment.
Speaker 2: No, Earth is just a giant planetarium.
Speaker 1: Okay. I like that we're at a zoo.
Speaker 2: We are a zoo. M hm.
Speaker 1: I like the South Park one where it's just we're
a big reality show.
Speaker 2: For space, or the planetarium episode the Planetarium Laser Show
Saturdayday Nights.
Speaker 1: I love that episode.
Speaker 2: Andre assured the audience at the Artic summer weather was
good enough, and the midnight sun would enable observations round
the clock. So he's like, summertime, sun's out the whole time,
we don't have to sleep.
Speaker 1: Oh, like like someone can always be awake. Basically, yeah,
good lord.
Speaker 2: He's like, we'll see where we're going. We can take
shifts now. The drag rope steering technique, which again doesn't work,
he believed was particularly well adapted for a region where
the ground consistent of ice, was low in friction and
free of vegetation.
Speaker 1: I mean, he might be right there.
Speaker 2: I guess the logics kind of sound.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you don't think about it a lot, I'm sure,
but it's like it's not just like a flat ball
of ice or like like plate of ice or whatever.
It's still topography to it.
Speaker 2: He said that the minimal precipitation in the area posed
no threat of weighing down the balloon if some rain
or snow did fall in the balloon. Andre argued that
above zero temperatures will melt it and precipitation at below
zero temperatures will blow off.
Speaker 1: Well, he's an optimist, obviously, based on his entire life.
Speaker 2: Through these arguments, the Royal Swedish Academy approved Andrea's expenses
and his calculation of one hundred and thirty thousand kroner,
which in today's money is a little under one million dollars.
Speaker 1: Whatever they need a hero.
Speaker 2: The single largest sum was about thirty six thousand kroner
for the balloon. With his endorsement. There was a Russia
support Andrea's project, headed by King Oscar the Second, who
personally contributed that money for the balloon itself.
Speaker 1: This is really like only it's such a funny like
propaganda thing, because I can't imagine anyone else from any
other country would give a single fuck about this. It's
like India putting a robot on the moon a couple
of years ago. Congrats you did it, guys, Yeah wow,
so did you do it? Yeah? Right? Or China like
China's like, oh we landed on the moon. You didn't
land on the moon.
Speaker 2: That was a Bollywood production for India.
Speaker 1: The dance at the end was fairly telling. Yeah there
there's like just at the end, like everyone on the
Moon's just like which, by the way, I think more
American movies should end with dance numbers.
Speaker 2: You know who also endorsed this journey one Alfred Noble. Okay,
now you'll know this name because he is the founder
of the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he invented dynamite and then it was like, oh
my god, this thing, this exploding thing. They used it
to kill people.
Speaker 2: Why now, Andre b and Sweden's first balloonist. No one
had the knowledge to his second guess in about buoyancy
and drag ropes. No one in the whole, in the
country at least. Yeah, he did find some criticism from
those in France and Germany who had a long balloon
in tradition, and several more experienced balloonist that were incredibly
skeptical about Andre's methods and inventions.
Speaker 1: They're like, dude, everything you said, this is an awful
idea I've never heard. It's like it's like that guy
who died. He made his own rocket and it was
like a steam rocket, and he was just doing He's
trying to go up as hig as he could to
prove that earth was flat. He was like, see, they
won't let you build like rockets and shiit on your
own because you get too high up. You fucking see
that the earth is flat. So that's why only the
government could control it. So he made a steam rocket
and the last thing he saw before he fucking died
was that the earth was round.
Speaker 2: Do you think in his last moments he accepted that.
He's like, well, it's kind of like being wrong after
death too, Like I didn't believe in an afterlife. All right,
I accept my face. I'll take the elevator down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just that line from Prometheus. He was so wrong,
We were so wrong. Hits.
Speaker 2: Every time you say it, dude for me, every time
you bring up for me, drop up such a how
was that's somehow replaced our like Kingsman Golden circles joke.
Speaker 1: Prometheus is an iconic movie, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I'll have to actually watch it. I think I have
seen it, but like I might have been so high,
I didn't really finish it. Or comprehend it.
Speaker 1: That's fair. Did you watch Generation Kill? Like I told
you to get so?
Speaker 2: I haven't watched Generation Kill. I will, that's on the list.
Rudy was just in studio here. Yeah, we should get
him on the show if we can.
Speaker 1: Yes, obviously, yes we should.
Speaker 2: Now France and Germany balloonists objections uh failed to dampen
Andre's optimism. It's very haters, just haters, very self believer
and self motivator, grinder.
Speaker 1: But that's what you say when everyone is telling you
giving you the same note haters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, it's not that I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: No, it's that you're a hater. It's that they're jealous. Yeah,
jealous haters, all of them. They're afraid.
Speaker 2: They are a little annoyed. They didn't think of the idea.
I came up with this brilliant idea. I'm gonna be
the guy, and they're trying to stop me. They're trying
to put some doubt in my head. And I don't
need that kind of negativity in my life. I'm blocking them.
Speaker 1: And it sucks. And I say this to someone who
is an irrational dreamer, But man, the haters have a
really high batting average.
Speaker 2: The haters almost always hit. They're all almost always right,
but sometimes they're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they look like real fools, just kidding. They
go on to the next one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't really accept that they were wrong.
Speaker 1: It's a target rich environment. Yeah, just finally, what do
they care if they miss? Every once in a.
Speaker 2: While, they're gonna apologize?
Speaker 1: No, No, it's like it's like it's like, could you
imagine like shaming a machine gunner in World War One
for only hitting twenty of the twenty two British guys
charging at you.
Speaker 2: Those other two come in the trench and they kill you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like like, come on, man, it's fen what
are you doing miss two of them? He's like, I
don't know. I thought there's a hundred of it other
of us here. You guys can't handle the other two.
I got the rest of them.
Speaker 2: Just hot sake culture, you know, just keep going, never
admit you're wrong always, and then always spike the football
when you are right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone's every millennial's dying words is gonna just be
like I wasn't wrong.
Speaker 2: Ah, put it on your tombstone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they'll say that to their dog because no one
else will be by their bed.
Speaker 2: No, they're for baby.
Speaker 1: Who'd I say that to? I forget. I just saw
someone post it on Instagram. For the LA fires, they're like,
and especially think about all the people who have to
evacuate with children and fur babies in the anxiety there
go do like this, just two entirely different things. If
your dog is burned to death, burned alive in the fire,
you're like, oh my god, that's horrible. That's horrible. I'm
so sorry. I'm so sorry. If your child is burned alive,
you don't even talk to that person again, because you
know they're a ghost, they're dead. You don't even want
to talk to that person again. I wouldn't blame anyone
for not talking to me. If my kids died in
a fire, I'd be like, I get it, I'm creepy. Now,
I'm terrifying. My brain is broken. You're right, my brain
is broken.
Speaker 2: You already look ghostly anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's nothing in here. I have no regard for anything.
You shouldn't be around me.
Speaker 2: And now you're just a empty vessel. Yeah, staring off
into the void. Yeah, waiting for the sweet embrace of death.
Speaker 1: Pretty much, you're kids wandering the earth.
Speaker 2: You've been hating on dogs recently, though.
Speaker 1: I know, and I love my dog. I love most dogs.
Dogs great. Not a person, not a child, Not a child.
This is fair.
Speaker 2: So he began negotiations with a well known balloon builder,
Henry L. Chambre in Paris, and ordered a varnished three
layer silk balloon, which was about sixty seven feet in
diameter from his workshop. The balloon was to be named Ornan,
which translates to eagle. Sure, we've had a Philadelphia reference
in an eagle reference.
Speaker 1: See where this is going?
Speaker 2: Did you plan to do that?
Speaker 1: Would you have scrapped this episode if they'd lost it,
if they'd blown that.
Speaker 2: We were close, we were close to doing it.
Speaker 1: I was like, I turned the game off and I
drove to dinner.
Speaker 2: That would have been a really big choke job. But no,
make this evergreen content. Let's not Let's move on. Yeah, yah, yeah,
let's move on. It didn't happen.
Speaker 1: We won.
Speaker 2: We're good. No need to scrap the episode. Now, the
slipping compartments for the crew were fitted at the floor
of the basket, along with some of the storage and provisions.
Now Rob is hydrogen highly flammable.
Speaker 1: I'm no scientist, and I don't trust scientists, so yes
it is, and you can trust me because I'm not
a scientist. I'm a guy on the Internet telling you
hydrogen is lamble.
Speaker 2: And we can just point to a situation where it
proved to be highly flammable.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not a hundred convinced that the Hindenburg was
what it was. I think a lot of people I
think that was probably an inside job to discredit the
burgeoning fourth or third Reich, and I just think there's
a lot to look into that we haven't talked about
yet about why the Hindenburg was probably. Look, I'm no
conspiracy theorist, but the United States did that to discredit
Adolf Hitler, and I think we need to talk more
about out the many ways in which Hitler was a victim.
Speaker 2: The thing is, I don't even know if it goes
that far. I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think
just weird things happen in the Jersey sky also true.
It's also being proven right now.
Speaker 1: What if those were interdimensional beings flying through the air.
Speaker 2: All those drones right now, and one.
Speaker 1: Of them just, you know, accidentally slid into the nineteen
thirties whenever took out the Hindenburger took out the Hindenburg
and slid right back. It's like, what do you call it? Interstellar?
He's just like going through time in that black hole
like that one of those fucking drones like accidentally popped
into another time, real quick.
Speaker 2: Changed timelines, just went right through the balloon, took it out,
killed hundreds. I don't know how many people actually died
in that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a lot, wasn't a ton.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it was like three fags though, right.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think it was. I don't think three
figs are get on a cepeline.
Speaker 2: How many It's like a cruise ship in the sky there.
I think there was a lot of people on it.
I mean not a lot of people, but like you know,
it wasn't like five people thirty six? Oh what the fuck?
How many people were actually on it?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 2: Did a bunch of people survive it? Yeah, that's crazy.
Imagine surviving the Hindenburg.
Speaker 1: That's such a badass thing.
Speaker 2: You have that in your back pocket, like somebody's telling
the story over dinner. You just meet your wife or
girlfriend's friends.
Speaker 1: Hustle my god, dude, the Hindenburg was barely bat in
three hundred they had ninety seven people on board.
Speaker 2: Thirty six died, okay, so two thirds survived. Yeah, really good.
I mean, why do we get rid of blimp technology?
Speaker 1: It seems pretty safe it is, especially once you swap
out hydrogen.
Speaker 2: And then I believe there's only like twenty five blimps
in the world right now, like that a lot.
Speaker 1: And the drones are even worse.
Speaker 2: They're all good year.
Speaker 1: Oh man. I was really hoping for this, but there
wasn't there. There is no documentary evidence of anyone being
on both the Hindenburg and the Titanic.
Speaker 2: That would have been great, I know, right, I just
wanted one person. It's like the dude from Japan that
survived both nukes. I still don't believe that guy existed.
That has to be a fucking hoax.
Speaker 1: The biggest hole in that story is that he was
on a business trip.
Speaker 2: The business trip and then after he got nuked and
was like within the two mile radius continue I mean,
it's the most Japanese thing ever to continue to work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those guys don't take a day off. But I
guess that actually does explain the business trip too, right,
like only only certain countries like Japan would be like,
gotta keep I got I got a job. I gotta
keep working like you are. The whole country is dying.
It is getting firebombed every day, and he's fucking processing
TPS reports.
Speaker 2: We should on the Ukraine a lot, but they are
doing that currently. Yeah they are, like they're fighting a
war against Russia. But like still gotta go to work.
Be like, oh, uh, I'm gonna be late today my
car got hit by a missile.
Speaker 1: Right fuck.
Speaker 2: They're still doing like, uh spin classes on roofs.
Speaker 1: Is it would be funny? I mean, what an excuse
to show up late to work every day? Though, like,
oh there's another missile. It's like, you know, seems like
there's always missiles where you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why are they targeting you?
Speaker 1: And look we've all been missiled. But it seems like
every time we have a meeting at ten am, you
get you catch a missile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your rental conveniently gets it.
Speaker 1: Can you you think don't think it's a little weird?
A little more Voldie, you don't think that's a little weird?
Speaker 2: How many missiles before you finally get canned.
Speaker 1: I think I hope they have a curby your enthusiasm
in Ukraine and that's a plot line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean their president is a comedian, so yeah,
you gotta think like they're.
Speaker 1: Like, what do you mean you're in a missile tack
that's four blocks away? You weren't in a missile tack.
I've been in a missile tack and I've been a
missle four blocks away. Four blocks. Why it's not missile tech.
You weren't near that miss their buildings in the way,
nothing hit you, not hey, one block, two blocks? Sure,
four blocks four blocks.
Speaker 2: Now, you're right. Hydrogen is highly flammable, so that meant
cooking could not be done in the basket itself. The
solution was a modified Primus stove designed by Andre's friend
that could be dangled twenty six feet below the crew
and then lit from the basket at a safe distance.
So they're like lowering down a fucking grill.
Speaker 1: First off, don't you have the flame thing right there?
Just stick your meat in there for a minute and
then eat it. Eat you know, roasted marshmallows. Because they're
eating like mostly sausages and cheese. And also this is
the land of pickled meats. All right, just eat your
fucking foul pickled fish and be fucking done with it.
A grill? What are they grill? I don't grill anything.
Speaker 2: You want your sausages high? Do they?
Speaker 1: They ate their fish cold and wet and pickled.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that is a tough, tough food scene. Portugal.
When I was in Portugal, they had these uh little
sardines everywhere and it was so gross. I hate sardines
are so bad.
Speaker 1: Oh I Actually I was gonna say sardine sardines are gross.
But I had my first anchovy.
Speaker 2: Pizza like a yearish ago.
Speaker 1: I want my buddy to a restaurant I used to
work out, like an Italian place, and he's like, dude,
my favorite actually is pepperoni and anchovy on this pizza,
Like it's really good here. And I was like, I've
never had any choices that piecea before and he's like,
it's a little weird, but like I think you like,
it's just salty. I was like, Oh, it's just salty,
just salt. Just tastes like salt, and I ate it.
And it did taste salty. It tasted like a salty.
Fucking it was also fishy as could possibly be.
Speaker 2: It's the most fishy.
Speaker 1: It is so fucking fish It's like, just take a
fucking fish alive, dump an entire Morton's thing, assault on it,
and just throw that in your fucking mouth. Salty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's awful. It was awful. That was always on
the menu as like an appetizer. Every corner in Portugal
had these sardines, these can sardine stores.
Speaker 1: I just don't think there's anything in America like that,
thank God, right, like really like things that we eat
like nationally where it's like, oh, we love.
Speaker 2: This, Like what we're too big and everything's regional.
Speaker 1: Even still what regional thing? Like hugely regional thing that
covers the size of Portugal with's Portugal probably like fifteen
million people.
Speaker 2: Who knows barbecue like Texas barbecue.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, nobody's offended by mozarellistics.
Speaker 2: Andre had many eager volunteers to choose from. He picked
Niles gustav Ek, home and experienced Arctic researcher and former
boss of Andre So. One of the guys used to
work for at I believe the university because he went
back to be an assistant at some point, he's like, hey,
you want to come along, You're cana come on this
death trip?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Perfect, he accepts, and then they also go with a student,
another Niles Niles Strindberg, who was doing original research in
physics and chemistry. The main scientific purpose of the expedition
was to map the area by means of aerial photography,
and Strindberg was both a devoted amateur photographer and skilled
constructor of advanced cameras.
Speaker 1: Which at this point you can still just still relatively
new build your own camera. Yeah, I mean it's just like, oh,
like you people were, like nowadays, I feel like new
cameras that are made are pretty much made by companies, right,
Like there's still people making them, but it's like under
the umbrella. But like back then, it's just like I
tinkered and invented a video.
Speaker 2: My man documents the entire thing. Like there's photos of
this shit everywhere, Okay, and I'll throw it up obviously
for the uh his like iconic photo of the balloon
as the main photo for the podcast, but maybe for
throughout the episode, all like sprinkled in. Okay, if I'm
you know, I have a day off tomorrow, I'll.
Speaker 1: Do that yeah, why not?
Speaker 2: Yeah, throw in some of his photos give him credit.
This was a team with many useful scientific and technical skills,
but lacked any particular physical prowess or training for survival.
Dur extreme condition three nerds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and I'm not a nerd, but I'm
not strong either, So, like you don't want me on it,
I guess I'll just be yucking it up, you know,
like like you don't want you don't you need at
least one person there who's just there to fight a
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Speaker 2: All three men were indoor types, self describing in the
door types.
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's even worse. They even knew they were
self aware. It's like, yeah, but we won't need to
worry about surviving on the ground because we won't be
on the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because Andre expected a sedentary voyage in a balloon bag.
Speaker 1: We should be sitting hanging out, eating pickled fish, drinking
pickled fish wine or whatever the alcohol fish.
Speaker 2: Poets is just gonna have the time of their lives.
Speaker 1: It's just a bottle of vodka with a fish in it.
Speaker 2: Now. When the attempt in eighteen ninety six finally came,
the wind battered Andrea's optimism by blowing steadily from the north,
which he did not account for at that time of
the year because he had, I guess studied the wind
patterns and that was very unusual for the time. Okay,
and then straight at the balloon hangar at Dane's Island.
Speaker 1: Nature has a funny way of absolutely fucking you at
the worst possible time.
Speaker 2: This actually saves Eckholm's life, oh, because he was skeptical
of the balloon's ability to retain hydrogen from his own measurements.
So while they were at the launch site at Dane's Island,
he was kind of doing his own measurements. Okay, He's like,
do I want to get in this?
Speaker 1: He was like, ah, this did not.
Speaker 2: His buoyancy checks during the process of producing the hydro
and pumping it into the balloon convinced him that the
balloon leaked too much gas to ever reached the pole
let alone Russia or Canada, and Eckholm estimated that it
would be able to stay airtime for about seventeen days
at the most, not thirty oh half the time, So.
Speaker 1: It'll it'll drop right in the middle of the North
fucking Pole.
Speaker 2: Basically, so eck Holm's like, not, dog, I'm out. The
expedition ultimately packed up, let the hydrogen out of the balloon,
can I tell you, and went home before I ever
taking off.
Speaker 1: I'm glad they didn't. I'm glad there's other two guys
didn't believe the science. This guy was like my calculation,
So like, oh, what you're the science? Now, oh you're
the science. Are you the science? Mister math?
Speaker 2: This guy at one point was his boss, so yeah,
he is the science.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the student, the photographer, he goes for the expedition
when they launched too point zero haters. So elm Eckholm's out. Yeah,
but the other Niles, the photographer, Yeah, he's like, dude,
who cares, Now, let's.
Speaker 1: Ride, let's go. Not but Eckholm certified hater.
Speaker 2: Andre resisted Eckholm's criticism to the point of the deception.
On the boat back from the launch site, Eckholm learned
from the chief engineer of the hydrogen plant the explanation
of some anomalies he had noticed during his measurements. Andre
had from time to time secretly ordered those guys to
top off the balloon when his colleagues weren't around. Oh
so add more air when they're not paying attention.
Speaker 1: So it seems like the balloon's better off than it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a dick.
Speaker 1: Any any sympathy I had with this guy, I hope
that he was shit out by fucking twenty polar.
Speaker 2: Bears echolm leaves. Do you feel better for echolm Oh?
Speaker 1: I didn't feel bad for him. I mean, I feel
like he's fine either way.
Speaker 2: So he's replaced by this twenty seven year old engineer,
Newt Frankel. He was a civil engineer from the north
of Sweden. He's also an athlete who was fond of
long mountain hikes. Well, at least they got that, so
they at least have a kind of outdoors min at
this point.
Speaker 1: Like whatever, dude, your bitch. Anyway, we got this math
gun and he's all jacked and shit, he's way tough
than you'd beat your ass.
Speaker 2: And on July eleventh, eighteen ninety seven, the three explorers
climbed into the already heavy basket and Andre dictated one
last telegram to both King Oscar and another newspaper that
had press rights to the expedition. The large support team
cut away the ropes holding the balloon as it rose slowly.
Do you ever see a hot air balloon take off?
Speaker 1: Uh? I don't remember.
Speaker 2: Maybe I went to the balloon fiesta.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 2: That It was kind of cool. It's kind of cool
to see kinda yeah, I wouldn't recommend like going out
of your way to see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We were on our way to a wedding in Phoenix.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a hot air balloon festival coming up
in Horseshoe Bay, Texas. And part of me was like,
I think it's on Easter weekend. And part of me
was like a courtney to your mom and stepdad, like
Horseshoe Bay and the kids might get a kick out
of the hot air balloons. But then part of me
was like, oh, no, the kids will be bored as fuck,
like eight seconds.
Speaker 2: In yeah, unless you take them up.
Speaker 1: Which I won't absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Have you been in the hot air balloon?
Speaker 1: No, And I'm never going a dopter in hot air balloon.
It would take an emergency.
Speaker 2: I went on a hot air balloon in Arizona when
I was like nine, Oh, you've told me the story before,
and we crash landed in the desert. Man, fuck that
my dad landed on me. He's a big man. Yeah,
it's like six ' three.
Speaker 1: He's like two forties type of thing, where like I know,
like if I'm up there with Rory or Finn or both,
it's just like, oh, we're going down. Okay. The only
thing we can do is I have to hold both
of you and just find a way for me to
be the death pillow.
Speaker 2: Thankfully there was a car that was following the balloon
from the ground and was able to pick us up,
because otherwise we were gonna be stuck in the fucking
desert for a what like a day, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Not that long. Okay, it's the nineties. It's fine.
Speaker 2: Anyway, nine years old. I don't know if I'd be
able to like survive my eating cacti.
Speaker 1: And I mean you can, I guess, eat cactus if
you want gotta take the pricks off. You got to
kill a jack rabbit.
Speaker 2: Well, you can cut into the cacti and then inside
there's some kind of vegetative thing you can put in
your mouth.
Speaker 1: Also a good way to get water. I believe I
could be tiller, but I think if you like, get
all the bullshit off. Obviously it's a water retaining plant,
like times a million, because it's a desert plant. Same way,
if you suck a camel's dick, right, water, nothing but water. Water.
Speaker 2: It's a little cream air. Though you can also get
some milk.
Speaker 1: Get whatever you want. Yeah, it's whatever you wanted to be.
It's come.
Speaker 2: As the balloon rose, it was low over the water.
It was pulled so far down by the friction of
the several hundred meter long dragged ropes.
Speaker 1: Oh, the ropes were there from the get.
Speaker 2: Go against the ground. The basket dipped into the water
off launch. The friction also twisted the ropes around, detaching
them from the screws. Most of the ropes unscrewed at once,
and about seventy pounds of rope were lost.
Speaker 1: Well, now they're just cooking. Now they're flying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the three explorers could simultaneously be seen dump
in over four hundred and sixty pounds of sand overboard
to get the basket clear of the water.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Six hundred and thirty pounds of essential weight was thus
lost in the first few minutes.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like, you know, it's like, how uh, There's
been a lot of voyages like that, for example, how
at first the Challenger seemed like it failed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if Elon Musk has proven anything, it's in
order to you know, get a couple of rockets out
into the orbit, get to crack a few eggs.
Speaker 1: Those aren't manned rockets, not a guy in all of
you in them.
Speaker 2: It's just a rocket. You got to blow them up
in order to see if they were.
Speaker 1: And if no one was in that balloon, fine, it
would be funny if Elon Musk is just secretly like
stuffing dogs into into every one of those rockets.
Speaker 2: What do you have? What's this beef you have with dogs? Right?
Speaker 1: A dog is a tragic thing. I actually think people
be sad about a dog than a monkey, and a
monkey would be so much more aware.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but monkeys are going to take over the planet
if we don't stop them.
Speaker 1: Nah, we got time. I mean, look if they if
we need an orangutang holocaust, I'll be the first guy
watching the tower.
Speaker 2: I don't really fuck with monkeys.
Speaker 1: They're kind of I mean, they're dicks, huge dicks, also
very powerful, strong as fuck someone my fair thing I
ever read about, like how strong is a chimpanzee? They're
basically just like, I don't know, be like fighting Captain America.
You know it's not Superman, but its strength will shock you.
Speaker 2: Before it was well clear of the launch site, Eagle
had turned from a supposed supposedly steerable craft into an
ordinary hydrogen balloon with a few ropes hanging from it.
At the mercy of the wind lightened, the balloon rose
to about twenty three hundred feet, where the lower air
pressure made the hydrogen escape faster.
Speaker 1: Does this mean they can at least set down really quickly?
Speaker 2: Not really, they're just kind of stuck at the mercy
of whatever the window.
Speaker 1: They're just floating in the wind, completely fucked.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: His weird rope steering wheel didn't work.
Speaker 2: And then as the higher they go, the faster the
gas escapes the balloon, and that'll just lower them. So
eventually they will land. Yeah yeah, yeah, but they don't
really have control where they land, right. Free flight lasted
for about ten hours and twenty nine minutes and was
followed by another forty one hours of bumpy riding with
frequent ground contact to get out before the inevitable final crash.
Speaker 1: Just get out.
Speaker 2: Now. You gotta see how far you can ride this thing.
That's it's so much worse. It's like Kramer and Seinfeld.
You know, you're on e and you just want to
see how far you can go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: Eagle traveled for two days in three and a half
hours all together, during which time, according to Andre, none
of the three men got any sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems that's that's hell. Imagine if you're on
a plane and it's crashing, but forever for three days.
You're in a three day plane crash, not like it's
like your plane crashes and you're stuck for three days.
Speaker 2: You're on a ride to Australia. But you know how
it ends. Yeah, it's not great, like you're gonna survive,
but you know it's it's gonna be a bumpy Uh, it's.
Speaker 1: A nightmare the whole time crash. That's my favorite line
from Lost, right before the plane crashes. I think it
was like Jack is nervous and with effort, the black
lady who's in it turns him and she's like, it's okay.
My husband tells me. My husband's a pilot. He says
the plane wants to stay in the air, and I
was like, that would soothe me too, and then it
rips apart.
Speaker 2: Like I typically look at the flight attendants if they're
not really worried, right, but once they start to like
act a little different.
Speaker 1: What do you do if you're getting served a drink
and there's like a piece of turbulence that you're like, whoa,
But you're like, oh, well maybe, and you can look
over to the flight attendant and she's just actively peeing
your pants.
Speaker 2: Go in the bathroom. Order the back of the plane,
because I think the back of the plane is where
you have the best chance of survival for any crowd.
Speaker 1: I thought the back was the least.
Speaker 2: Now front, you're fucked. Okay, back you have a very
slim but better chance in the front. The final landing
appears to have been gentle. None of the men were hurt,
and none of the equipment was damaged. But again, they
were throwing shit off, like a lot of provisions and rope,
just to get weight off so they could get out
of the fucking water.
Speaker 1: Kept the cameras though, huh, cameras are good. Was it
an edible camera?
Speaker 2: Not an edible camera?
Speaker 1: But wasn't made out of like edible panties? Wasn't made
out of like fruit loop or not fruit loop fruit
roll up material?
Speaker 2: No, but food's not really an issue here. They do
have plenty of food, okay. From the moment the three
were grounded on July fourteenth, Strindberg's highly specialized became a
means of recording daily life. He took about two hundred
photos with his fifteen pound camera over the course of
three months that they spent on the packed ice good Lord,
one of the most famous being the picture I mentioned
earlier of Andre and Frankel next to the eagle like
kind of tipped over. Yeah, it's a pretty iconic photo.
I like it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't. I can't. I can't imagine it, so
I don't know if I've seen it.
Speaker 2: I'll show it to you after Okay, Yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Andre and Frankel also kept records of their experience and
positions in their diaries and journals.
Speaker 1: Was the dude was the new mathematician? Like, God, damn it,
fuck this guy. I hate this asshole?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where Andre was a little bit more optimistic about
their chances survival, Frankel, I believe, was a bit more
butt hurt.
Speaker 1: Yeah was Andre? Ever? Like, what are you writing?
Speaker 2: I met you at some point, Yeah, what are.
Speaker 1: You writing about this? I wrote that I'm writing that
it's interesting, not fun, obviously, like not fun. Okay, it's
not fun. I'm having fun. I get that, but look,
it's interesting, right, I'm writing that's interesting. Don't you think
it's interesting. They're just like, yeah, yeah, we're writing that
it's interesting. Yep.
Speaker 2: Strimberg's photography was also accompanied with his own diary, which
was a bit more personal in content. Included his general
reflections of the expedition, as well as several messages to
his fiance in case, you know the things inevitable, what happened? Yeah,
Eagle had been stocked with safety equipment such as guns, snowshoes, sleds, skis,
a tent, a small boat, though it was in a
form of bent sticks that had to be assembled and
covered with a balloon silk yeap, and most of it
was stored not in the basket but the storage space
arranged above the balloon ring. These items had not been
put together with great care.
Speaker 1: They were just like, yeah, it's boat. Boat's boats. Just
see the boat. They're like this sucks. It's a shitty boat, dude,
what are you even doing with this?
Speaker 2: Andrea's rigid sleds proved impractical for the difficult terrain. The
men's closed include no furs, but were woolen coats and
trousers plus oil skins. They wore the oil skins, but
reportedly always were wet or damp the entire time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably they're on water. They're on frozen water.
Speaker 2: That would suck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a fucking nightmare.
Speaker 2: Being perpetually wet for four months, Oh disaster. Hell and
you just I know it's summer, but you're still cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Ask anyone who was in a trench in World
War One.
Speaker 2: Before starting the march, the three men spend a week
in a tent at the crash site, packed up and
made a decision about where they were gonna go. The
choice was between the two depots of food and ammunition
that were already laid down for their safety. One was
at Zwalberd and one was at Cape Floral or Flora,
and for and wrongly from their faulty maps that the
distances were about equal from each other, they decided for
the bigger depot at Cape Flora, which was much further away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it is Cape Flora, sounds
like it's near Canada. This Fensburg sounds like it's right
near home. And they didn't go long. What they're in
the air for three fucking days. Yeah, They're like, I
think we should go towards I think we should walk
to Canada.
Speaker 2: By the time they crashed, they had thrown some of
the provisions overboard. The three men took most of the
rest of them on, leaving the crash light along with
their other necessities such as the guns, the tent, the ammunition,
and cooking utensils, making a load on each sled about
four hundred and forty pounds each. They brought I think
two sleds. Good lord, this was not practical, as both
the sleds broke down and the men would wear out.
After one week, they sorted out and left behind a
big pile of food and non essential equipment, bringing the
loads down to about two hundred and ninety per sled.
It became more necessary than ever to hunt for food,
so they went about killing seals, walruses, and polar bears
throughout their march.
Speaker 1: I mean there's plenty of stuff. There's a lot of meat, yeah,
really fatty meat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's much better to get stuck in
like the Arctic than Antarctica.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, there's not nothing lives there, just like
penguin penguins. Yeah, there's a reason that penguins live in
those huge giant colonies because a polar bear doesn't walk
in and eat them because they're not there.
Speaker 2: Because if they were there, they could just go into
those colonies and just feast.
Speaker 1: Go bananas. Yeah, I mean there is stuff that hunts penguins, certainly,
like there's orchids and stuff down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah. On August fourth, they decided, after a
long discussion, to aim instead for the other depot, hoping
to reach it after six to seven weeks. The terrain
in that direction was extremely difficult, sometimes having them come
to a crawl on all fours. What because they're pulling
the fucking sleds. Oh yeah, yeah, this is the scene just.
Speaker 1: Off the fucking I would have just killed Andre, honestly,
been like, how much lighter would it be if he's
dead and we only need two thirds of the shit.
Or I would have made him. I would have maybe
made him a slave. He'd be a he would be
a slave, carrying everything until he died and then we
would ditch stuff. And I'm not saying slavery is just
like a good thing, but it feels justified in this
particular instance.
Speaker 2: On September twelfth, the explorers resigned themselves to wintering on
the ice and camped on a large piece of floating ice.
Let in the ice take them where it would like,
you know what, We're in God's hands now.
Speaker 1: They're just floating in the ocean.
Speaker 2: One of those like big old pieces of floating ice.
Good God that like breaks off. Yeah, I got onto
one of those, and they're just like fuck it, like
where it takes.
Speaker 1: Maybe this will go somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The flow began to break up directly under the
hut that they built their winter home on, and on
October second, they were forced to bring their supplies onto
back onto the island itself and get off the float
before it would break under from underneath would an asshole.
Later scientific analysis revealed the contents of the final pages
of Andre's diary, with its last entry on October eighth, reading,
it feels fun to be able to sleep here on
fast Land in a contrast with the drifting ice, but
upon the ocean, where we constantly heard the cracking, grinding
and din. We shall have together driftwood and bones of whales,
and we'll have to do some moving around when the
weather permits. It is inferred from the end of Strimberg's
diary on October seventh, and Andrea's on October eighth, that
the three men died shortly after, still kind of unknown
how they died because their bodies weren't uncovered until nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: Good Lord.
Speaker 2: For the next thirty three years, the fate of the
expedition was shrouded in mystery, and its disappearance became part
of cultural lore in Sweden. The bodies were discovered in
nineteen thirty cremated, and yeah, it's kind of just become
a fun little.
Speaker 1: Swedish story, is it? What a dickhead?
Speaker 2: And that is the story of Essay Andreda, the Swedish
balloon that got two dudes killed because he was kind
of a dick.
Speaker 1: But they found the camera and developed the photos thirty
years later. That's awesome. That's fucking sweet.
Speaker 2: Why not, you know, they're like.
Speaker 1: Let's see what happened. Let's see what happened to that.
Speaker 2: They found the journals and they found the camera, so.
Speaker 1: They're like, here we go, Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 2: What if you found a camera just kind of like clearly,
like nineteen seventies, nineteen sixties camera just kind of on
the ground, it's weathered. When you saw you found like
a camera roll in it. Why don't you try to
get that developed? You see what's on there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Why not? Okay, man, they are Yeah, they're on
a piece of land. Definitely. It is nowhere I have
ever heard of. I mean it is nothing.
Speaker 2: What is it? How far north did they get?
Speaker 1: Uh? God, this is a horrible Matt expedition. They got
pretty far north, I guess, but like nowhere near the
North Pole. It's just this little ship bag of islands,
just that no one cares about. I don't even know
who it belongs to. It could be completely fucking honest,
belongs to the world. Yeah, I mean it is bad. Lord,
no one was ever gonna find them, and they didn't know.
Speaker 2: How do you think they died.
Speaker 1: They probably just got hit by a storm or some bullshit,
like the starvation. Maybe did they even have fresh water?
I guess snow? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think snow was Yeah, I don't think water
was an issue.
Speaker 1: Okay, then maybe they starved, I guess. But he's like,
I was like, Oh, it feels good to be sleeping
in and there's plenty of fish, and.
Speaker 2: I hope a polar bear got him. I kind of same,
at least I say Andre, the other two hopefully die
peacefully in their sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean most times its just you just
fucking freeze to death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they probably They probably froze to death. Who's today's hitler?
Speaker 1: Essay? Andre is today's hilor.
Speaker 2: For lying about filling up the balloon again?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, absolutely is a total griftl hitler of shit?
Speaker 2: Would you learn the day.
Speaker 1: That the haters are right?
Speaker 2: Haters are always always right?
Speaker 1: Look, the haters aren't always.
Speaker 2: Right, and when they're not right, they still don't admit that.
Speaker 1: But they're batting average, they're shooting percentage if you're if
you're batting, what the haters are batting? Show a Tani
looks like a bitch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thanks for tuning in today. Make sure to
check out our Patreon, Patreon dot com slash softcore history,
where you get two additional episodes every week, one on Wednesday,
one on Friday, and at this point we got three
years of evergreen content only five dollars a month, or
if you're a big baller, twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: Yep. New original sketch coming in this week on Patreon,
starring both me and Dan Hey.
Speaker 2: I did some voices for that.
Speaker 1: Just that is some voices.
Speaker 2: I don't know if there there are good voices, but
they are he did the voice. And make sure to
leave a review five stars please and thank you on
Apple and Spotify. Spotify just five stars Apple, if you
could at a review, that will be incredibly helpful, super
help And yeah, we'll read some if they're funny in
the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: A few new ones, but yeah we will.
Speaker 2: We'll just wait until they kind of build up. Yeah,
and follow us on Instagram softwore history. I don't think
you can follo us on TikTok anymore, although actually TikTok
is back who cares allegedly. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't.
Speaker 2: We don't do TikTok where we're men in our thirties. Yeah,
I mean you do.
Speaker 1: You're I have it.
Speaker 2: That's insane. You have Snapchat still too, Uh.
Speaker 1: It's on my fucking phone. I don't use it.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm kind of understand because you can use
it with your kids and put the funny filters on it.
I don't do that, but I know you don't do
that because you're still you're probably just sliding.
Speaker 1: Them slid, Yeah, sliding and left and right, dude.
Speaker 2: He's getting the nudes from uh TFM girls from ten
years ago. Hell yeah yeah, So like that, it's totally
worth blowing up my entire marriage over.
Speaker 1: Here's a funny thing that happened once the night the
night I got engaged to Courtney, someone snapped me nudes.
They're pussy and it was just titties. And I opened
it because I don't you don't know, it's not You're right, So.
Speaker 2: You're opening in snapchat on the night you got married
or engaged engaged, okay.
Speaker 1: And I'm just opening because snapchat was still a thing then,
And I was just like what, who sent this? And
there's titties? And I was like whoa? And I didn't
respond to block that. I didn't. I just didn't respond
because she had just like sent me normal snaps before
and I was just like an old TFM fan and
because i'd I've been away from TFM for a.
Speaker 2: Year at that point, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: But that was the first time she ever sent me
nudes and I was just like whoa and uh random,
I just didn't respond. And then she followed up like
five minutes later, what no response? And I was like, uh, well,
I got engaged tonight, so I didn't feel it was appropriate.
And she goes, oh, I'm sorry, congratts.
Speaker 2: She said that, yeah, yeah, yeah, home wrecker. Yeah damn.
I never really got nudes ever.
Speaker 1: I got some good nudes. I got some graphic.
Speaker 2: Nudes, not for like random chicks or whatever. For some reason,
whoever I did or am talking to, they always think, oh,
you probably get girls sliding in your DMS all the time.
I don't. It's all dudes just sharing shitty memes.
Speaker 1: Oh now, yeah, I don't even want chick sliding. No, no,
I don't really want dudes either.
Speaker 2: But it's also yeah, if you're sliding into DMS, it's
kind of like beneath you, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if you want to do it in
a genuine way to be like, hey, dude, what you
said was like I like your show, Yeah.
Speaker 2: For sure. If you want to like give me actual
feedback or like so hey, like enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Say what's up? Yeah, or even be like even like
talk about sports or something, that's fine.
Speaker 2: If a girl size in your DMS very unbecoming, what
are you doing a woman?
Speaker 1: There's no dude bumble. There's a reason. There's bumble one
way only.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you're a dude signing into another dude's DMS, yeah,
come with something more than just like a shitty ass meme.
Speaker 1: Especially if it's not even for our show. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like what we do for work. I
don't really don't. Don't come into my DMS about that.
If you want to do it for our show, this
is the only thing I care about. I still don't
want memes from other people.
Speaker 1: You can give us idea funny history meme. I'm into that.
Speaker 2: I'm not all right fair enough anyway. Thanks for tuning in.
We love you guys, even if we don't want in
our dms, you can get as fun. And for Rob Fox,
I'm Dann Rochester. You just got saw served